The office of mobile health app Clue has all the hallmarks of a Berlin startup. Based in an old building in the trendy Kreuzberg district, a rickety old goods lift takes you up to a bright open plan space, littered with colourful beanbags. Inside there is a nap room and a large, empty glass cabinet, which will soon be filled with 3D-printed models of each of its 45 employees. Despite appearances, Clue is decidedly different to other tech startups. For starters, its chief executive, Ida Tin, is a woman. And her route into the industry is an unconventional one.
Before co-founding Clue in 2013, Denmark-born Tin ran motorcycle tours in Cuba, Mongolia, the US, Chile and Vietnam. It was her own frustrations with the side effects of hormonal birth control that inspired her to launch an app that tracks women’s menstrual cycles, with the aim of improving their reproductive health. “We’ve had amazing innovations in all kinds of areas, but it seemed like within family planning nothing was happening. So I started looking to see if maybe there were different technologies out there that I could puzzle together,” she tells me.
Clue, which is used by both women trying to conceive and those trying to avoid it, works by allowing users to keep a log of their cycles on their phones. They input data on their bleeding patterns, pains, moods, sleep, energy, skin and hair at different times of the month. The market for these sort of apps has become is increasingly crowded, however. Fertility-tracking apps are now the most downloaded category of health app. At the time of writing, seven of the top 50 free health apps on Apple’s App Store were related to reproductive health or period tracking.
But many of these apps are “patronising” towards women, says Tin, who herself is open and thoughtful. She believes that women “want science, want to learn about endometriosis, want the latest research news”. They “want something that feels solid”.
For this reason, Clue, which is free, sets out the basic realities of reproductive health in blunt, scientific terms. No pink, no flowers, no wry suggestions that today might be a good day for your boyfriend to buy you chocolate, like other apps. But that frankness has come at a cost, says Tin, especially when it comes to raising money.
“I think there’s an unconscious bias that investors have, where they tend to invest in things they can emotionally connect to. I find that many men intellectually understand the product ... but getting over that last little barrier and writing the cheque is harder,” she tells me. Despite these challenges, Clue, which has 5 million global users, brought in an impressive $20m (£16.4m) in funding in November last year. Tin puts this down to the fact “the app is relevant to half the world’s population.”
Tin is a firm believer in the “powerful” nature of data. “We’ve built a whole landscape so people can orient themselves and make good choices. That’s really fascinating,” she says.
Clue’s team is currently working on expanding that landscape. It recently developed an integration for fitness tracker Fitbit. It is also working with Stanford University, Oxford University, and other research institutions to advance scientific research into female health.
Tin acknowledges there are problems with collecting and sharing data too. While data can be empowering, it can also be used to harm, as numerous malicious breaches of personal data over the years have shown. There are greater implications when it comes to women’s health apps, because of the intimate nature of data collected. Last year, it was reported that someone “with no hacking skills” would easily be able to access US-based period-tracking app Glow’s users’ data. Fitbit was also found to have similar vulnerabilities, having leaked users’ locations.
“The industry doesn’t have a high enough standard,” says Tin. “At Clue, we take pride in being respectful and careful with people’s data. “Whenever we collect data, it has to serve a purpose that is meaningful and clear for the user.” Clue recently updated its terms of service to better educate its users about how it uses and protects their data. “We’ve set our own bar, and I hope people have to follow that bar.”
Coding for diversity
While the tech industry struggles with diversity, Tin wants to build an app that is as inclusive as possible. Many of Clue’s users are transgender men, Tin says, and having transgender people on the team has helped reduce the app’s gendered language to ensure users do not feel excluded or uncomfortable about their bodies.
“The transgender community is really important to us. But being truly inclusive is really hard. I think we’ve done a better job than anyone out there, but we still have a lot to do.”
Tin points to user icons as an area for improvement: during a testing session, a member of the team pointed out that the icon for “good hair” showed straight hair. “What if you’re African-American and you have curly hair?” says Tin. “We have identified the problem and we want to address it properly. This will take time, but it’s an ongoing focus for us.”
Diversity is also something Tin attempts to replicate in the workplace itself. One particular challenge has been gender parity in pay, especially in a fast-growing startup. When she founded Clue, everyone was paid the same, but rapid expansion means this is no longer possible.
“It’s difficult – you can have your structures and your salary brackets, and then you might have a candidate who negotiates really hard, and you really want that person, and that person happens to be a man. There’s a reality layer than makes things less simple.”
Despite the challenges to women working in tech, Tin has plenty of advice for aspiring female founders. “Know what you want to build, but also about what price you’re willing to pay personally,” she says.
“And know what price you don’t want to pay. I want to see my kids every day, and sometimes it feels like a choice women have to make – start a business or have kids. I don’t accept that.”
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